My son and I have started an experiment to see if we can grow tea, Camellia Senensis, in New Jersey. This is a crop which, if you are producing leaf-tea, has a yield that we’ve read is quite high per acre. However, our climate is USDA Zone 7, and commercial growers I know of are further south in the USA. As an Englishman who primarily drinks coffee, and who lives in New Jersey, I find it amusingly ironic to attempt this experiment. Last year we planted two early growth bushes to see if they would over-winter in our region and now I am attempting to germinate 100 seeds. The procedure for the seeds involves an alcohol wash as a contact cleanse and then soaking in water for two days before allowing the hard shells to crack by a procedure of wetting and drying, and then planting in pots.

Will this work? We will find out. In our favour is the fact that tea is a “foothills” plant in China and India, not a tropical plant. Against us are the deer, so the plants are currently in the “demilitarized zone” defined by an electric fence around our kitchen garden.

Updated 03/02/2024: after a couple of damp/dry cycles in our basement, 114 seeds have been planted. I rejected 6 “floaters” and we got 120 in our order of 100.

This morning some trees went out to a customer. We have a JCB skid steer to help with this jobs.

One of the 80 year old maple trees on the driveway dropped a branch in a recent storm. Since this was near the house we used the lawn tractor to do the clean up. No point wrecking the lawn with a big machine. Can you spot which branch will fall next?

A young buck showed up near our house with some netting wrapped around it’s antlers. My husband was able to free it by cutting them away first with a lopper and then with bolt cutters. He ran off and shook off the remaining netting. He knew we were helping him, but it was pretty stressful both for him and us. This is why you can’t dump garbage in the woods. Once untangled, we were able to retrieve the net.

I love eating the freshly toasted pumpkin seeds taken from our own Jersey Fresh pumpkin grown in the field right outside our house. My recipe is a little olive oil and Jane’s Crazy Mixed Up Salt.

We have to replace some of the posts in our 1950’s era fence. It was originally made from native redwood and milled down the road at a sawmill in nearby Lincroft. That doesn’t exist anymore, so we have to make them ourselves.

My husband keeps this photograph in his office. It shows the farmhouse we now live in, as it looked in the 1950s. This photo pre-dates the extension of the Garden State Parkway into Monmouth County. Red Hill Road was subsequently relocated from where it is seen here to occupy the space between the fence and and hedge that can be seen in front of the house. You can see we lost around half of the front yard as a result.

This stuff seems to work, but it’s hard to tell. By mid July we have to start spraying the hydrangeas as well. The whole kitchen garden has quite a stench when you’re done.

The hostas are exceptionally beautiful and luscious this Summer. Every morning when we wake up the first thing we do is look outside to see if the deer have eaten them yet. Still untouched!